City officials are hoping a 500-space garage proposed for downtown Baltimore across from the Legg Mason tower will help keep Legg Mason Inc. in the building that bears its name.
The 10-story garage, to be constructed on Lombard Street between Charles and Light streets, is being developed by the owner of the 100 Light Street office tower to accommodate tenants, said John Alba, a vice president of Newkirk Realty Trust of New York, the tower owner.
Legg Mason occupies about two-thirds of the 35-story tower, the city's tallest building, which has an underground garage with 300 spaces. The company's lease expires in 2009.
"It's a very prominent building on the Inner Harbor, one of the original buildings there, and parking is definitely an issue for the building," Alba said.
"To enhance our investment and further the needs of the building, we are dedicated to getting this garage constructed ... to accommodate Legg's needs and any other tenant we'll be leasing to," he said.
M.J. "Jay" Brodie, president of Baltimore Development Corp., said BDC officials have had continuing discussions with Legg Mason about the investment firm's space requirements, even before last summer, when Legg and New York-based Citigroup Inc. announced a landmark $3.7 billion business swap.
Through the transaction, completed in December, Legg acquired Citigroup's mutual funds and asset management businesses, doubling the assets it manages to $851 billion and becoming the nation's fifth-largest money manager. In return, Citigroup's Smith Barney subsidiary took Legg's roughly 1,500 brokers.
"We've had these conversations with Legg Mason and parking in that building is one of their concerns," Brodie said. "They have a lot of folks, and they have relatively little parking."
The firm is going through the typical assessment of space that most companies undertake a couple of years before a lease is to expire, Brodie said.
"Parking is one of the elements in their ongoing conversation," he said. "We would like them to stay downtown and would like them to stay in that building."
A Legg Mason spokesman said the company had no comment on its downtown office space needs or the garage.
"We are not going to have any comment on the proposed work on Lombard Street," said Jeffrey Bukowski, the spokesman.
